Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday July 31, 2010 @07:18AM
from the hedging-against-a-massive-sunlight-spill-in-the-gulf dept.

TravisTR sends word of research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance which found that direct subsidies for renewable energy from governments worldwide totaled $43-46 billion in 2009, an amount vastly outstripped by the $557 billion in fossil fuel subsidies during 2008.
"The BNEF preliminary analysis suggests the US is the top country, as measured in dollars deployed, in providing direct subsidies for clean energy with an estimated $18.2bn spent in total in 2009. Approximately 40% of this went toward supporting the US biofuels sector with the rest going towards renewables. The federal stimulus program played a key role; its Treasury Department grant program alone provided $3.8bn in support for clean energy projects. China, the world leader in new wind installations in 2009 with 14GW, provided approximately $2bn in direct subsidies, according to the preliminary analysis. This figure is deceptive, however, as much crucial support for clean energy in the country comes in form of low-interest loans from state-owned banks. State-run power generators and grid companies have also been strongly encouraged by the government to tap their balance sheets in support of renewables."

Without subsidies your electricity bill would be larger.
Subsidies aren't magic. They come from taxes. Without the taxes which support this subsidy and the associated bureaucratic and overhead waste, my electricity cost would be higher, but my total household cost would be lower.

The debt is LARGER.Deficit is all people talk about and often confuse with the debt. The total debt is higher but when we had a "surplus" instead of using that to pay down the debt, the public thought we were in the green again !?#@!You can't ignore your mortgage because you stopped going in the hole every month!

As far as this national debt blabbing its hype - because it was a non-starter before 2009. During WWII the deficit was much higher; although, we had a real GDP back then. Also, the total debt was lo

As far as this national debt blabbing its hype - because it was a non-starter before 2009.

Yes, this was an amazing thing. The Republican rhetoric was very much talking about fiscal responsibility and balancing the budget... right up until a Republican president had a Republican majority in congress. At that point, with amazing suddenness, the Republicans stopped talking about fiscal responsability, and the Republican president didn't see any expenditures that didn't look just fine to him. Talking about the debt was-- as you say-- a "non-starter." In fact, I even heard the Republicans say tha

If you include social security as income (and payments as expenses), and if you count "the government buying debt from itself" as well as "the government paying interest to itself" as a wash, the Clinton administration did run a slight "surplus."

So, do you think that you have more money to spend when you lend yourself money and then pay that money back to yourself with interest? I didn't think so.

In any case, it was damn impressive that he got the budget under control to the point where it was even close

Clinton reduced expenses alright. He closed down many military bases. Several programs were either shut down or reduced in scope (remember the Strategic Defense Initiative, NASP, one thousand ship Navy).

During his time some things were closed though they shouldn't have like the IFR, or AVLIS. His predecessors showed a similar myopic view by shutting down Synthetic fuel research. It would have been nice to have any of these technologies available right now!

Well, to be fair, of the military bases closed by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commissions, the 1988 and 1991 closures were done while Reagan or Bush were in office, and it's not really fair to credit Clinton with the 1993 BRAC, since it was already well in process when he took office in January 1993. So, really the only base closings you can credit Clinton with were the 1995 BRAC.

One of the few times that a process that is inherently partisan (every congressman wants to keep the base in their d

The debt is LARGER.
Deficit is all people talk about and often confuse with the debt. The total debt is higher but when we had a "surplus" instead of using that to pay down the debt, the public thought we were in the green again !?#@!
You can't ignore your mortgage because you stopped going in the hole every month!

As far as this national debt blabbing its hype - because it was a non-starter before 2009. During WWII the deficit was much higher; although, we had a real GDP back then. Also, the total debt was lower back then... but then now we monopolize the new gold standard: the US dollar -- that is until it gets so weak that it loses status or more nations allow OIL to be purchased in euros. We may have gone off gold, but we realistically traded it for OIL we didn't have but was sold in dollars...

When the government borrows money from a private corporation (the FED), whose motto is "more profit" the government loses with greater losses in the long term.The national debt would be more controllable if the government printed its own currency, backed by precious metals, and borrowed against itself at 0% interest.

I'm sure subsidies are somewhat wrapped up in the $13Trillion in US national debt. Most of which was brought about by the Bush 2 administration who had direct ties to the oil industry.

There is no debt. Fractional reserve banking is based on fiat paper with no hard currency backing. Go ahead and believe the FED stooges,they will be laughing all the way to their bank while you sit in a cave near a smokey camp fire. Mommy I'm hungry.

Japan rebuilt its economy after WWII using fiat paper, after they were forced to give back all the gold they had confiscated during their invasions in Asia. It worked pretty well for a reasonable amount of time. Gold is useful as an exchange medium because it represents something of actual value. It takes a supernova explosion to create it. However our wealth does not come from something like gold, but actual human effort multiplied by available tools. If you take that into consideration the US has consider

The operative words being - to good use -. When bankers take peoples houses, when industries put people on the street for more profit overseas human capital sounds like slavery. China and India seem to have cornered the market on that account. When people can just be thrown away like so much trash, there appears to be a fundamental flaw in the business model. Gold is not the only precious metal. Any metal that has an intrinsic value in industry is a candidate. Money today is used for achieving power and wea

Whoops,/. truncated me there big time.
About 2 million barrels per day of US oil production comes from stripper wells that have 10 barrels per day of output, most of these are from small time operators not the majors, and have been a major factor in keeping the decline in US production low since it peaked at the beginning of the 70s. Tax breaks for these nickel and dime operations help. Also oil companies Big and otherwise pay a heap more taxes than they receive subsidies. Just saying.
US is one of fe

Yes, this article is somewhat misleading. First, it's talking about world wide subsidies, which considering most of the world's oil is owned produced by state owned companies is likely a very complicated calculation. This article [cleantech.com] puts US subsidies at between $15 and $35 billion, numbers that include some very dubious things in there, such as construction of the highway system, the strategic petroleum reserve etc.
What people don't seem to understand is the motivation for US subsidies. The US government wants to encourage as much domestic production as is reasonably possible, and they don't want a government entity to have to produce it (like countries with nationalized oil industries do). The only way to do this, therefore, is to make it more attractive for oil companies to extract oil that would otherwise be uneconomical. "Relaxing the amount of royalties to be paid", as the link above calls it, is I believe the main way the US government supports the oil industry.
If these royalties reductions weren't in place, many of the wells in America would simply be uneconomical. The stripper wells mentioned by someone before wouldn't stand a chance, and collectively they account for 18% of US production (according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]). Without deep water credits, much of the gulf production would be an economic non starter (and gulf production is about a third of US production). And the overriding thing that people ignore is that 50% of zero is less than 5% of something. If you force a stripper well producing 2 barrels a day to pay a regular royalty, you're not going to bring in more money for the government, you're going to force that well to be plugged and abandoned, and it's probably never going to be economical to redrill it. Both the government and the industry loses.
It is expensive to extract oil in America's increasingly depleted fields, particularly compared to the younger and much larger oil provinces of the middle east and elsewhere. Because of this, the US government grants the oil industry here better incentives than in those countries to try and keep them in America - simply put, they allow the companies to keep more of the oil they produce. Maybe Americans are no longer comfortable with that deal, but they must remember that hiking royalties will significantly lower US production and will necessitate greater imports from unsavory places.

The only way to do this, therefore, is to make it more attractive for oil companies to extract oil that would otherwise be uneconomical.

If it's "uneconomical" to drill that for as much as 2 million barrels of domestic supply, wouldn't you think this is a big incentive to increase development of alternative sources of energy?

The reason these subsidies irk a lot of people is because the same conservative "grass-roots" "think-tanks" and the Chamber of Commerce that are all about letting the God of the Free Market control everything would howl with outrage if these subsidies to oil companies were to be cut off or even reduced.

There's no where near a concerted effort to develop alternative energy in the US, despite environmental disasters of enormous scale, including a million barrels now dumped into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. Yet, any time alternative energy is mentioned, you'll hear scoffing and arguments such as "Alternative energy is never going to replace energy" or "If it was going to happen, it would have happened already" or "Solar energy can never be useful because it wasn't useful ten years ago".

What they're really saying is "Nothing's going to replace fossil fuels until we find another source of energy that will enrich the same corporations and to the same extent that are currently getting rich from fossil fuels". If there was a way that BP or Exxon could get hugely rich off of solar energy, solar energy would have replaced fossil fuels decades ago.

I heard a great quote from an economist that is related here, "You wouldn't have to subsidize public transportation if you'd stop subsidizing private transportation [roads, mainly.]" It's not literally true, but it makes a good point.

You can have a disaster happen with any other form of energy. Imagine a wind turbine blade snapping off and hitting someone [google.com]. Or the pond wastes from silicon processing (it is cheap to wash them off with sulfuric acid) which are polluting large parts of China as we speak. The reason for getting alternative energy is not the environment. If it was about the environment we would all be using nuclear power by now, which has been the safest in terms of kWh produced. Or we would have already upgraded uranium sep

Yes, but there's also no NEED for the government to take a role in this either.

We should just let the "free market" work and BP will come up with a solution that will put them out of business.

Can you point to one single technological advance that has occurred since 1900 that was thanks to the "free market"? (note: this is a trick question because there has never been such a thing as a "free market". Not on Earth at least.)

The taxes paid by the FF industry...dwarf the subsidies they receive, however.

Any evidence to back this up? Or are you just guessing?

There are more tax deductions for corporations than for individuals, on top of subsidies. Break the political-corporate financial bond, if you can, and there may be some equity (don't hold your breath).

And they still expect to be paid by the government to convince them it's worth their time to make hundreds of billions.

I'm sorry, but that's just ridiculous. And the same people who believe the free market should determine everything about our lives also believe those subsidies to oil companies are absolutely necessary. And a remarkable number of those people are the same ones who will tell you that we absolutely must continue to pay huge cost overruns and ridiculous markups to military contractors, because otherwise, they might not want to make all that great hardware with which we fight our glorious wars.

Oh, and absolutely no negotiating with pharmaceutical companies, because otherwise they won't want to do the research and make the pills that earn them hundreds of billions in profits. And although CEOs must be free to negotiate hundred-million dollar salaries because that's the free market at work no workers must be allowed to collectively negotiate their salaries because that would HURT the free market. Got that? CEO's negotiating = Good / Workers negotiating = Bad

The issue is that there is basically no way companies focused solely on stock market performance will do massive investments. Especially not on long term projects which may show limited returns compared to, you know, hedge funds, buying gold, or building houses no one wants to buy. Check out the major US auto manufacturers. The only one which has managed to stay reasonably in shape is still family controlled to a large degree.

As for the military contractors, it has been painfully obvious that the main is

As for the military contractors, it has been painfully obvious that the main issue was the governments insistence on reducing the number of units ordered, as well as the amount of contracts per project, thereby decreasing the number of existing military contractors.

So it's the government's fault for not making contracts that are lucrative enough for the military contractors.

And that would be a good thing. It makes sense that the people who use electricity should pay for electricity.This is known as a "market economy," and it encourages things like efficiency, and matching the supply to the demand.

There's some sense to subsidizing an emerging technology: encouraging the fledgling technologies in hope some of them will grow could result in a large payout further down the line. There's no sense in subsidizing the giants.

...In the case of the major oil companies it's very dubious that they should still get handouts, but some of the tax breaks have been useful to small operators...

And only a trivial percentage of the tax breaks actually go to small operators, because the big operators have much more money to lobby with; and also much more money to pay lawyers to find the loopholes to enable them to qualify for the subsidies intended to support small operators. (Much like farm subsidies, actually-- the bills that are passed because they will be "supporting America's family farms" actually end up supporting the huge factory operations.)

I'd like to know why they include military expenses as a "subsidy" for fossil fuels. We don't have to use the military to get oil from Iran or Iraq - we could buy it from friendly countries like Canada, UK, Russia.

Also renewable energy like solar cells, hydroelectric, and so on need military protection as well (from invasion or terrorism). So the military expenses should be on that tally sheet too, but they conveniently left it off.

I'd like to know why they include military expenses as a "subsidy" for fossil fuels.
Because it helps to spin the story to express the viewpoint which they would like you to believe and they hope that most people will not dig too deeply and just accept them at their word.

Well that is logical. It makes more sense to drain countries like Venezuela and Arabia and Iran dry of oil, while you leave your own reserves untouched. Then circa 2050 you can sell your North American oil for big bucks.

We spend more than all the other nations of the world COMBINED on our military and other defense. We need to shift that money elsewhere or at least try to conquer the world so we have something to show for it. Apparently we are doing the latter, but they are doing a damn poor job of it.

Yes, but the oil companies do like the cheaper higher grade stuff from the Middle East. Why in the world else would we be so involved in the Middle East decade after decade while refusing to intervene in places that actually ASK for our help?

Every country needs protection from invasion and has a military to deal with that. None of them spend anywhere near as much of their national budget on it as we do. If all our military had to do was protect us from invasion, they wouldn't be dropping so many of those million dollar smart bombs today. You seem to be desperately clutching at straws here.

We've been involved in the Mideast since World War 1. It had nothing to do with oil, but as part of the anti-Germany campaign. Then we withdrew and returned again during WW2, and we never bothered to withdraw. Instead we decided to become Israel's ally and protector.

And now we're "stuck" there. Even if we discovered our way to run our cars on hydrogen, we'd still be involved in the Mideast because we stupidly stick our noses (and bases) where they don't belong (Mideast, EU, Russia, Japan, China).

When Brazil was making overtures to Cuba, US reduced aid. A military coup eventually happened and the US immediately recognized the new government and loaned them money. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]

Except we don't just buy oil. We spend $TRILLIONS keeping the global oil production set up the way it is, enforced by our military. Then we buy it in the market we create with that military. So we do both. Meanwhile, our constant wars (and wars by proxy, eg. in Israel) keep the market prices high, though the cost to the producers themselves is low.

The cost of protecting renewable energy is very small. The military/intel budget would need to be only $150-200B annually for everything ($200B / everything), but

Ah, so Joe Stripper Well Operator in Oklahoma should be paying more in royalties (or closing down his well, the more likely course of action) because even though the lower royalties mean it stays open and the government _gets_ more money than if it closed, we're going to call that "subsidies" and say he's not paying his fair share of the military costs involved with us buying the oil from Iraq instead of Oklahoma...

1: I said operators should be paying more in royalties.2: If oil producers paid more royalties, they'd go out of business.3: The government collects more money when it collects less money.

First, I never said operators should be paying more in royalties. All I said was that, contrary to the post to which I replied, the oil industry does indeed consume a vast amount more military budget than alternatives do. Which was obvious, but the comment to which I replied tried the usual sm

Before Gulf War I George HW Bush said that protecting Kuwait was in our vital national interest. What was that vital national interest? What is the vital national interest that had US troops in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc before 9/11?

We already only get a small amount of oil that is actually shipped from the Middle East. However, since oil is a global commodity interruption in the flow from any of the major exporters would have global consequences, as we've seen whenever there's been a hint of confl

Maybe it's because the Military uses boat-loads of fossil fuel during it's operations, especially naval, air and air-mobile ops. Still it seems hookey to include military ops as a subsidy for FF industry. It also seems that organizations coming from a political or an advocacy point of view play fast and loose with the definition of subsidy.

No, the way I read the headline, fossil fuels are providing a subsidy provide renewable energy for dwarves. I didn't realize they were incompatible with existing renewable energy, but I suppose high winds at windfarms, or large waves at wavefarms, might sweep them away more easily than full-sized people...

Iran's government owned oil company doesn't lobby their government. That's where 1/5th of the subsidies are from - essentially price breaks for the Iranian people from the Iranian government oil company.

Leader of Senate: All fellow members of the Roman senate hear me. Shall we continue to build palace after palace for the rich? Or shall we aspire to a more noble purpose and build decent housing for the poor? How does the senate vote?Entire Senate: FUCK THE POOR!Leader: Good.

You have a valid point, but your scenario is much more of a short-term problem. Millions of people can keep dying from preventable illnesses in developing countries, and that would still not be as bad as the supposed inevitable catastrophes of climate change.

Save millions of lives now with combustion generators, or save millions of lives plus every coastal city 100 years from now with more renewable energy plants and research?

The solar cell keeps working for 20 or 30 years whenever the Sun shines. With a combustion generator you're buying fuel all the time plus they require a much higher level of maintenance than a solar cell. The question is what is your total cost over the life of the project.

It would be interesting to see how the fossil fuel subsidy number was calculated. Even assuming the calculation is accurate, I'm not sure I buy the argument that renewable energy would be more economically viable than fossil fuels if not for government intervention. The article ignores taxes on fossil fuels, which I'm sure would dwarf any subsidies.

Not even CLOSE to accurate.
How much money is paid for the right to DUMP pollution in the air in the burning? Nothing. We have a couple of 100 fires in old coal mines that the company that created the mine does not have to stop (too expensive). Both pollutions are HUGE. And how much is paid to offset it? Nothing by the power companies.

How much money is paid by Power companies for the right to send out mercury? The vast majority of mercury that is emitted by man is from power plants. In fact, out here in West USA, nearly all of the mercury in our waters come from power plant emission, or in a few areas, from old mining tailings.

The money that BP will pay for the gulf is but a fraction of the damage that it caused.
Exxon paid very little of the clean-up in Alaska. And Nigeria has large amounts of environmental damage, all caused by oil companies that do not care about spills.

In addition the taxes that will be paid on the oil that will likely be sold elsewhere (such as Alaska oil) is a pittance compared to how much we are stealing from out children.

Finally, the thought that we burn oil is just amazing to me. Oil truely is one of the worlds wonder chemicals. It permeates our society in every aspect. Yet, we throw away the majority, and really do not pay but a fraction of the real costs of burning oil and coal. It is time to stop this for our national security.

A quick search found this $557 billion is primarily from China, Venezuela, Egypt Iraq and Iran consumer subsidies. When the government owns the oil company the subsidy is not making the owner rich. It might help the less well off more than the better off through reduction of gas costs but study results seem mixed.

The taxes on oil primarily are taxes on gasoline and diesel for consumer use - as farmers know, industrial use is not so much. The taxes on coal are a joke. I googled the words "taxes coal" and came up with this news story from Tennessee, 2008:

"The state coal tax is currently set at 20 cents per ton and has not been increased since 1984.

As introduced, the bill would have set the tax at 4.5 percent of gross value, which Jackson said is the same rate charged in neighboring Kentucky. Members of the Senate Tax Subcommittee suggested the levy was too high at an earlier meeting and presented an amendment Tuesday that calls for a two-step increase to 3 percent."...while that $557B comes to about 14% of worldwide spending on oil & coal, based (roughly) on the Wikipedia articles.

I'm sure that on the whole, more is taken from than given to the fossil-fuel industries, but the subsidies, as another poster mentioned mostly in Asia, mean that world-wide, the "pressure" on the whole industry is much lighter than most would assume.

It's not that renewables are economically viable in any situation where the fossil-fuel industries don't have to pay for their externalities; it's a way of highlighting that far from bringing in those externalities in the form of a tax or fund or cap or any other restriction, we are taxing their use at all, very lightly.

The moment all the subsidies stop and something like $50/T (C) is imposed on digging or pumping carbon out of the ground (and $50/T is paid to those who put it in), the game is pretty much up for fossil, save where gas/kerosene/diesel are the only way to go for high-energy density (aviation, remote cabins).

Subsidies are not just there because of lobbying and power, though - subsidizing cheap energy is a great economic stimulus in general, which is why you find it in new, growing, developing economies especially. Which is the heart of the warming issue: if "saving the world" involves telling a couple of billion Asians to spend an extra generation in poverty, is it worth it?

Mentioning taxes, wind turbines in the US currently get highly favorable depreciation rules, which I expect are not accounted for in the numbers in the article. Given just in Indiana I've seen several new, large wind farms (and they're still building), I expect the indirect subsidy with the depreciation is a considerable number. (If someone does the research on this, mod him up).

It will require a reduction in everyone's standard of living in rough parallel with how much extra burden it puts on the economy which is related to how fast/how early the adoption occurs, and the health of the economy at the outset. Looking at current economic conditions, is this wise?

If its cost is cheaper than building levees around New York, Miami, and all the other coastal cities that'll be underwater in a few decades, then yes, it's wise!

If its cost is cheaper than building levees around New York, Miami, and all the other coastal cities that'll be underwater in a few decades, then yes, it's wise!

What will it matter what happens in a few decades to the sea level if the US goes into economic collapse in the next 3-10 years or even sooner, which we are in danger of currently even without adding more stress to our economy? If that happens, there won't be any government enforcement of environmental protections...or much of anything else, for tha

The article gives almost no information about what the funding is used for other than: renewable good, fossil fuels bad. If you look at the current renewable power production in the US [doe.gov] it is 7% of the total and coincidentally the total funding worldwide for renewable energy is roughly 7.5%. While you can argue about giving more funding to renewable energy, they article gives zero information about what the money is used for. The funding could have been used for implementing cleaner technology on existin

That is the sad part. We say that we want one thing, while our subsidies are helping large corps with large lobbyists, while paying very little to what would help America. Compound that with 1/2 of the money of the AE world going to Ethanol. That was a payout to farmers by neo-cons in HOPES that they would get votes. Obama needs to show some backbone and change this.

My suggestion has been, and will remain, that Obama/Congress need to change these subsidies to not favor any one company or arena, but to ta

Being against neo-cons, does not mean that I am in favor of Obama or lefties. I oppose the neo-cons for their total disaster that they created. However, if you even read this post or others, you will see that I am also calling Obama/dems to task for their in ability to change things. Or their UNWILLINGNESS to do the right thing. ANd I separate the neo-cons (reagan and W minions) against the republicans (lincoln, goldwater, truman, etc).

Of course, when you compare to what Coal and Nukes got in their beginning, this is absolutely NOTHING. Both Coal and Nuke power got HUGE subsidies in their early days. Which is exactly why they remain at the top on these. Which is also, why I have suggested changes to our subsidies structures for years.

It depends. We've needed lots of new power plants in the past few decades, so subsides for high-output plants was important. Renewable power is only just starting to be a viable major power source- most government funding towards renewable should still be focused on research. Indiana has hundreds if not thousands of turbines erected or being erected, for example, so renewable power isn't being neglected (I don't know about elsewhere, I just see these turbines a lot). The problem is wind and solar are only g

I mean.. coal is bio-energy. Oil is bio-energy. The remnants of bio-mass that never made it to the sky, but whose carbon dioxide instead was stored in the ground by nature herself, process commonly known as "natural sinks". How can it be healthier for the planet to burn off bio-mass before it even gets a chance to sink or be "filtered" through various other life forms? I would have thought the production of bio-mass in sum cause as bad outlets of CO2 as oil. Not to mention the harm it does to various specie

Maybe off point, but with my wife we used to joke: if the color is green, it must be healthy.Last year we went to a vineyard in France, where the owner explained he had not applied for the "Bio" label because he used modern selective fungicides, thus his soil is alive. The "Bio" use copper sulfide at such quantities as to completely eradicate the microbial life from their soils. I prefer not to think what they drink from their wells. As agricultural engineer I think this case of "Bio" is entirely harmful.

It's all solar in the end right...just converted to chemical energy. I've read up on the intricacies of bio-fuel and on the whole I'm against it. The trouble is the long term environmental impact of land based fuel crops is horrendous...and all we get is a net neutral in terms of CO2...suck it out of the sky...put it back in.

Algae offers much in terms of land use but little in terms of the CO2 neutrality problem. Much more research needed; don't believe the hype.

If you're a greenie, you'll like this rah-rah study. Maybe you need some re-energization.

However, if you're not, maybe you'd like to know exactly _how_ true numbers have been distorted:

Dollar-wise, the biggest distortion is to consider road maintenence and building as a subsidy. This is slippery, since the substantial fuel taxes were justified and accepted by the voters on the basis they would pay for roads. Most places, the road funds are in surplus and contribute to general revenue, not draw from it.

Another large item in the US, but totally unaccounted is the oxygenated gasoline regulations. In many areas, the (obsolete and ineffective) legal requirement is for gasoline to contain 2% oxygen, earlier met with MTBE (which doesn't biodecompose fast enough) and now met with ethanol. In addition to the $1.50/gal direct subsidy, this legal requirement puts a demand floor under deathanol. How much is it worth? Who knows, but probably a large fraction of the direct subsidy.

Accounting for electricity is tough -- renewables use the same grid, and so anything is common. But renewables have poor reliability characteristics, so regs like equal buy/sell price actually are an uncounted subsidy. They certainly require more standby generation.

So according to Wikipedia, approximately 7.3% of electric power in the United States comes from renewable energy. According to this article, approximately 7.4% of the total subsidies were allocated to renewable energy.
Oh, and let's not forget that they are including bogus "subsidies" such as military costs in the equation.

Even assuming what you're saying is 100% true, the implication of that is that the current scheme of subsidies MAINTAINS THE STATUS QUO and DOES NOTHING to encourage development of renewable energy sources.

If you want to *encourage* something, you need to MASSIVELY weight the equations EITHER FOR OR AGAINST. A policy of "weighting" (via subsidies) things equally is literally a waste of money, while *appearing* to do something for renewable (look see how much money we spend subsidizing it)?.

What this shows is just 6 years. It does not show the money that was originally put into many of these programs. For example, Nuke had LOADS of R&D done by the feds. Still does. And it still needs more (hopefully this time, the feds will not stop the IFR project that has been quietly started at UIUC; GD kerry for pushing it and CLinton for not having enough backbone to say no). And Coal had LOADS of fed and state assistance to get started. Free land; loads of pollution with zero clean up (see pix of eastern aChina to get an idea of what some parts of America was like in the 60's).

Even now, the subsidy that is being calculated in the above study has NOTHING about the air, water, and ground pollution that is allowed. If burning coal and oil had to pay for their pollution in all these areas, then they would quickly run to the top in terms of costs. WELL OVER Solar PV (which today is the current king of costs).

Hate to rain on the parade, but if you compare that graphic to a breakdown of energy sources [doe.gov], it's pretty obvious renewables are getting a much larger subsidy per unit of energy produced. I dunno why people who make charts like yours insist on comparing numbers in such a skewed way. It's like claiming the Johnsons with a food budget of just $250/mo are somehow more frugal than the Smiths who have a food budget of $750/mo. Leaving out the fact tha

Yes, AE is getting more subsidy on a per watt item. HOWEVER, when Nukes, Coal, and Natural gas were started as energy production, they got a LOT more than this. Once the installed wattage is up, then the subsidy/watt drops.

The good news is that it accomplishes what needs to happen. Making industry accountable for their pollution. By requiring Coal and Gas plants to bury it, they will have a strong incentive to do things like Solar Thermal to the plant. Likewise, they will want to do energy storage. Basically, once Fossil fuel is required to handle their emissions (and that is IN ALL NATIONS; not just in the west which is what is happening), then and only then will the air, water clean up and items like Nukes and AE become try

What's wrong with that? As I've said here before, there seems to be among some environmentalists a peculiar emphasis on behavior modification even at the expense of solving the problem. This appears to me to be an example of that thinking. If the fossil fuel industry (which really is more than just the harvesting and burning of fossil fuels) really can go carbon neutral, especially if they figure out how to recycle that carbon into biofuels, then why shouldn't they keep going? At some point we need to have

If you include the cost of our presence in Iraq, the oil subsidy dwarfs imagination.

You are aware that the US gets most of its oil domestically, from Canada, and Mexico? Most of the Middle East oil ends up in Europe and Asia, not the US. The US gets about 15% of all its petroleum from the Middle East, and about 4% from Iraq.

And in Iraq, the biggest share (about 80%, IIRC) of drilling rights issued to foreign companies went to non-US companies... If we're there for oil, it's for oil for other countries, not the US.

Even if TFA does not specify a single example. I think that is immaterial. The real issue is why my tax dollars are being used to subsidize the oil industry in the first place. It is not like that industry is fledgling, not been around for a while or actually really needs it; especially given their historical profit levels over the years. Even in your last statement you still miss the point. The billions used to subsidize the oil industry should not even be there... it should be in renewable energy.

For example there are tax subsidies you can get for building a 'green' office building. It might sound odd, but having piles of cash around, as well as offices all over the place the oil industry is in a prime position to build or remodel their offices to be green.

If subsidies like that are part of the study they shouldn't really be, as they apply to any business - Ford, IBM, Cisco, Pepsi, Sears, Walmart, JCPenny, the local toolshop, whatever.

Subsidy dollars per GWh are the relevant units. According to the EIA, and browsing through dsireusa.org, we find that "renewables" currently get the greatest subsidies by far.

Mod parent up. This is like saying your next door neighbor give $20 per week total allowances to their children, compared to $5 per week you give your kids. Never mind they have 16 children sharing that $20...

Wind and solar get about 100 TIMES the per-GWh subsidy of oil and coal.

Others have also mentioned the taxes; ExxonMobil (that evil Big Oil company) pays about $3 in taxes/Government fees for every $1 in net profit the company makes. Governments make the lion's share of the money from Exxon pumpi